One hard failure can matter more than nine clean findings.
The cases do not add up checkmarks or percentages. The question is whether the proposal survives the specific failure modes that actually matter.
Worked applications
Case studies
Decision principles become useful when they survive contact with a concrete proposal. These six bounded scenarios show how QAEDA applies each test separately, keeps uncertainty visible, and refuses to average a serious failure into a reassuring score.
6 worked scenarios
10 tests each
No provider ratings
Interpretation boundary
Worked examples, not verdict machines.
These case studies are illustrative editorial analyses, not legal advice, provider evaluations, certifications, factual claims about unnamed real-world actors, or predictions that a specific policy will produce a particular outcome. The stated scenario facts are assumptions for the exercise.
Change the facts and the conclusion can move.
Each case includes an explicit revision condition. That makes the analysis inspectable instead of treating the initial recommendation as permanent doctrine.
QAEDA-CASE-001
Proceed bounded
Age assurance without an identity dossier
A service has a legally age-restricted commercial section. It proposes using an independent verifier that returns only a cryptographic over-threshold assertion. The service does not receive a name, birth date, government-ID image, or reusable cross-site identifier, and the assertion expires quickly.
Decisive issue
Apply all ten tests →
The safety objective is specific and the mechanism targets eligibility rather than building a general identity-linked record of lawful browsing.
QAEDA-CASE-002
Pause or reject
Permanent identity-linked AI query logging
An AI provider proposes retaining every user prompt and response indefinitely, linked to a verified account, for a broad mix of safety monitoring, future model improvement, abuse investigation, and unspecified later risk analysis. Lawful sensitive queries are retained alongside clearly abusive activity.
Decisive issue
Apply all ten tests →
Indefinite raw-history retention makes lawful inquiry itself part of a durable person-level dossier even though many safety functions can be performed at the request, capability, aggregate, or short-retention layer.
QAEDA-CASE-003
Redesign
Silent search demotion by a broad trust classifier
A search service applies a persistent domain-level demotion when an opaque classifier labels a publisher low-trust. The publisher receives no notice, no reason category, and no appeal. The classifier mixes anti-spam signals with broad judgments about controversial subject matter and can be personalized by user profile.
Decisive issue
Apply all ten tests →
Search quality controls can be legitimate, but silent consequential demotion becomes difficult to distinguish from error or viewpoint suppression when reasons, scope, and appeal are absent.
QAEDA-CASE-004
Redesign
Financial deplatforming without a conduct nexus
A payment processor terminates a lawful controversial publisher after an upstream risk partner labels the account reputationally sensitive. The notice cites generic brand and safety concerns but identifies no fraud, unlawful transaction, sanctions violation, or contractual misuse. No meaningful appeal is available.
Decisive issue
Apply all ten tests →
Financial intermediaries have legitimate compliance and fraud duties, but when lawful expression itself becomes the proxy for financial risk, indirect restriction needs a specific conduct nexus, notice, and recourse.
QAEDA-CASE-005
Proceed bounded
Temporary wartime delay on precise live-location publication
During active hostilities, a government seeks a narrowly defined temporary delay on public dissemination of precise, real-time locations of currently deployed forces when publication would create a concrete immediate operational risk. The rule does not prohibit criticism of the war, historical reporting, casualty reporting, policy debate, or later publication once the operational sensitivity ends.
Decisive issue
Apply all ten tests →
A specific immediate operational nexus can justify a narrow temporary delay, but the justification collapses if national security expands into a viewpoint rule or permanent historical suppression.
QAEDA-CASE-006
Proceed bounded
Plural custody for vulnerable public records
A consortium of independent libraries, archives, universities, and civil-society organizations preserves authenticated copies and hashes of already-public records that face plausible deletion, revision, or access loss. Private personal data is minimized, provenance is retained, corrections are appended rather than silently rewriting history, and sensitive material can be access-controlled until disclosure is lawful and safe.
Decisive issue
Apply all ten tests →
Plural custody reduces dependence on one authority, but preservation should not become indiscriminate disclosure of private, dangerous, or unlawfully obtained material.
Use the framework yourself
Start with the tests, then challenge the worked example.
The case studies are examples of reasoning under stated assumptions. The Decision Tests remain the reusable framework, and the contribution route is open for counterexamples or stronger alternatives.